Before moving to Texas, I only used “y’all” as a parody of Southerners I had met. Now it’s used daily and without the accent.

It’s been weirding me out lately how speech patterns and word usage, while mainly influenced by a person’s upbringing, are also a result of a person’s environment. The way a person talks is a pretty big part of their personality, so being around a new group of people for extended periods of time can essentially change who you are. Even if you’re aware of this and you consciously try to not be like the rest of the group, your language is still being influenced by the people you surround yourself with.

Sometimes this happens with negative results. A few years ago, conversations with my siblings would start the following way:

ME: “Hey! How are you doing?”

SIBLING: “Not much. How about you?”

I honestly can’t remember which one of my ninety younger siblings started saying this first, but it caught on pretty quickly. Before long, every one of them would respond to that question with that exact answer. It took quite a while to make them realize that “Not much” makes no fucking sense when someone asks how you’re doing. Now we all speak English much many goodly, and things are fine.

When it comes to changes in speech patterns, it’s amazing how efficiently office jobs can strip people of their individuality. I assume it’s because everyone realizes that the work is monotonous, pointless, they’re slowly dying, etc.. Because of this, phrases are repeated ad nauseam.

This has been a common response around my workplace that fills me with sadness:

ME: “Hey! How are you?”

PERSON: “I’m here.”

Fucking wow.

I know that they’re implying a number of things with this response: “I’m bored,” “I hate my life,” “I continue to push forward despite being in the mud at this bore of a job filled with bureaucratic nonsense designed to crush people down into little robotic cubes that get the fucking job done, don’t question the status quo, and continue being just barely satisfied enough with life to not end it prematurely.”

The response still bugs me, though, because only three or four people of the hundreds who work here don’t use it when they’re asked how they’re doing. I know everyone’s here. I can fucking see them all. Just lie like the rest of the world, dammit. Say you’re fine or quit your fucking job already. I’m just gonna’ start saying “I’m in Zimbabwe” any time someone asks me how I’m doing. It might not make any sense, but at the very least it’ll start a conversation.

This is one of those things about people that makes me wonder whether free will has any kind of role in life. Did I have any choice in my induction into the cult of “y’all?” Even if I had actively decided to never say “y’all,” wouldn’t that decision still have been influenced by the past development of my anti-social personality?

Whoa, what was that last piece of shit I posted? I honestly don’t know, but I’ll attempt to elaborate on its sentiment.

As of late, I’ve felt an overwhelming sense of purposelessness that has been amplified by mood swings ranging from muddy depression to “fuck it.” I’ve managed to avoid a full-force depression spiral because the “fuck it” moods are regular enough for me to keep writing and creating on a weekly schedule. The depression usually happens when my extremely poor self-promotional abilities kick in and this happens:

While I’ve been creating content I genuinely enjoy, I am so far removed from the pulse of trendiness and any kind of business know-how that I have absolutely no idea what I need to do to make people give a shit that I’m creating things. Because of this, creation starts to feel a lot like I’m just shouting into a void.

I say something like, “Hey look! I fought my constant, crushing, existential dread by making this thing that reflects my values and/or tastes and thus is probably the most solid representation currently available of who I am as a person at this point in time!”

And the void replies, “……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..”

For it is the void.

During my “fuck it” periods, the silence doesn’t bother me in the least. The process of creation is pleasing enough by itself to have me look at floundering view counts and say, “Meh. At least I’m having fun making shit.”

When I’m in those depression periods, though, the silence kicks my overthinking into full throttle, and I come up with a myriad of reasons why what I’ve just made is a total piece of garbage. Comparisons to other, more successful people ensue. Then I browse social media for an hour and look at all the seemingly happier people living their lives. I wonder if not pursuing any attempt at a social life has doomed me to a life devoid of any real connection to the world. Has everything I’ve ever done been a waste of time and space? Should I just settle into obscurity and accept that I don’t really belong anywhere? You know what sounds great right now? Two pizzas. And a cake.

As the hopelessness fades, I usually start to think that maybe continued failure to meet my own expectations is my only real driving force to keep creating. Once I return to a “fuck it” mood, I start to create out of enjoyment again, and that sentiment disappears.

At some point, I’m sure I’ll figure out how to bypass the post-release depression stage of creation. Either that or I’ll experience some modicum of success briefly and go crazy when it ends. Or maybe a comet will crash into the Earth and none of this will matter much.

Maybe none of this matters much now.

AWKWARD ENDING SELF-PROMOTION

Have I mentioned that I’m terrible at self-promotion?

I make things in a lot of different media. If you’ve enjoyed my writings here, you might enjoy some of those other things. Here’s a few websites where I do stuffs:

Due to the wild success of my previous list of inspirational quotes, I’m back to inspire the ever-loving fuck out of you with some more magical words of wonder from my favorite thinkers.

“Be the change you want to see in the world, ‘cuz all deez mothafuckas around you is content to be pennies.”

–Gandhi

“Chase your dreams like they stole your motherfucking money. Then beat them down like the punk-ass bitches they are.”

– Ancient Chinese proverb

“The sky’s the limit, but you can’t breathe up there. And it’s cold as fuck.”

–George Clooney’s long lost brother, Frank

“You may not have the power to change things you don’t like, but you can stare right into the fucking sun until you can’t see those things anymore.”

–Frank Clooney’s long lost brother, George

“Sometimes ya’ gotta’ grab life by the balls and twist ’em until it cries, and then say ‘You will never fuck with me again, life!'”

–Tony Robbins

“When life gives you lemons, eat the shit whole, peel and all, just to show life that you don’t fuck around with processed shit. Then throw out your cutlery. Stop preparing any meals. Only eat the shit you find on the ground. Commit, motherfucker!”

–Alan Watts

“Never forget that the universe needs you for compost.”

–Michael Jackson

“Life is like a box of chocolates: you probably shouldn’t eat all of life. And it’ll mostly be comprised of shitty things, but it shouldn’t be thrown away because someone gave it to you. It also doesn’t always come with a guide. And it’ll be gone eventually. Also, it’s great to smother all over your naked body.”

–Tom Hanks

“You are you. That’s truer than true. But so was Hitler, and he killed a lotta’ Jews.”

–Dr. Seuss

“Embrace your inner child: poop your pants.”

–Mom

“Fake it ’til you make it. And if you don’t make it, at least you had fun faking it. If you didn’t have fun faking it, then you’re fucked.”

–Socrates

“You are one with the universe. Just like your garbage.”

–Malcolm X

“Be like a lion: murder the shit out of pretty much everything you can.”

–Mufasa

“Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger or wears you out over a long period of time ’til you die. Like AIDS.”

–Nietzsche

“Ask the universe for what you want, and the universe will make you do that shit on your own.”

–The Secret

Hopefully I’ve managed to get you out of whatever existential funk you found yourself in prior to reading this list. If you liked this, you’ll probably enjoy my new Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Memestavostopher/

Which of these quotes most strongly resonates with you? What is your favorite inspirational quote of all time? Post ’em in the comments!

Let me start by clarifying that I don’t mean this to be a strict review or criticism of Outlast 2. If I were to arbitrarily give it some kind of score, it’d probably be a pretty decent one. The game is overall immersive and fills me with dread, with an intriguing, unnerving story and collection of characters at its base. That’s all I think I could really ask for in a game of this genre.

As of the time of writing this I have yet to complete the game, so reviewing it would be premature since I haven’t gone through the whole experience. As I assume anyone reading this probably hasn’t played or finished the game, I’ll be keeping this pretty much spoiler-free.

While I have had some heat-of-the-moment criticisms of the game, upon further thought I have changed my mind on most of them. The conclusion that I’ve reached is that the game can be pretty awful if you’re an overthinker.

Thanks to my brain purposefully making things more complicated than they had to be on several occasions, I ended up repeating certain chase and stealth scenes so many times that they lost any essence of horror. The dread I felt on the first run-throughs of these scenes quickly turned to frustration on repeated attempts, dulling my problem-solving ability and making me think the routes and solutions to these sections were something ridiculous. They never were.

I haven’t been able to discern whether the lack of intuition was due to my brain’s failings or the game’s. Because I’m a fan of beating myself up mentally, I’m leaning more towards the former.

When it comes to repetition diminishing the feelings of horror you’re supposed to be experiencing, this isn’t something unique to this game, or even the horror genre as a whole. The reason I hesitate to form any of these opinions into an official criticism of the game is because I’ve come to realize that one of the major problems a horror game developer has to face is that gameplay has to be involved in the storytelling. Gameplay is necessary to get you immersed in the hardships and fear of the character, and some sort of threat has to be involved to do so (otherwise, you might as well just be watching a movie). Because the possibility of failure has to exist, horror-diminishing repetition is also extremely likely. Overall, Outlast 2 has managed to get over this major hurdle.

Most of us have seen some really shitty horror films or played some really shitty games that throw a jumpscare in every two minutes. If no time is taken to establish an atmosphere or sense of reason around the jumpscares, then the audience reaction is going to turn very quickly from “AAAAAH!” to “Ah, fuck off with this shit.”

This game has its fair share of jumpscares (RHYMES ARE FUN), but you can forgive it because the atmosphere is usually dripping with “Nope”ness. The same can be said of repeatedly having to play a chase or stealth section. In most cases, when you finally get through those harder bits, the game’s atmosphere is able to efficiently drag you back to the horror you felt the first time you played the previous section.

There are some scenes that didn’t quite have that impact, though, in which I found myself thinking “Oh. This shit again. Sigh.” Without giving away too much, once you get to the mines, in particular, there seems to be a lot of being chased by one type of enemy (albeit, a well-designed, scary one) with very little variation in gameplay. Run. Crawl under a thing. Jump. Squeeze through a gap. Rinse. Repeat. While this is par for the course in horror games, this section really starts to feel like it’s dragging on. The environment, while interesting in this section, can’t really be observed much or treasured because you’re running away from things all the time.

Overall, Outlast 2, though regularly frustrating, accomplishes everything a horror game should. It also does an excellent job of taking stereotypical horror concepts (such as being pursued by mutants in an isolated desert) and making them incredibly interesting.

Have you finished or started to play Outlast 2 yet? What do you think about games as a storytelling medium when it comes to the horror genre? Feel free to let me know or berate me in the comments!

It’s important to take some time this Easter Sunday to remember what this holiday is really about, and there’s no better place to find this than this totally real quote from the Bible:

…and on the first day in the sealed tomb, Jesus awoke and invented chocolate. Yea, was it so good that He couldn’t control himself, and He ate so much of it that His tummy hurt. Though Jesus expected to rise on the second day, he had to spend the entire day recovering from intense chocolate shits.

Bored and in pain, Jesus created a pet bunny from the sand and named it Easter. Had he not had the company of the bunny, he may not have gotten through this terrible diarrhea.

Easter, having gone crazy from being in a sealed tomb inhaling diarrhea fumes for two days, took the chocolate shits and molded them into eggs.

On the third day, the Romans did open the tomb to find it empty. A bunny walked out with a bunch of shitty eggs in its hands, but the Romans, being fixated on the man missing from the tomb, didn’t even notice. Though one of them did comment on a weird sort of sweet, nutty smell, it was attributed to demons or something and never spoken of again.

Easter, coming back to his senses after finally getting some fresh air, decided to get rid of any evidence that he had created these shitty eggs. And yea, did he hide them in various places throughout Rome.

In a strange turn of events, the children of Rome found all of the eggs, and being stupid children, put them directly into their mouths.

And yea, was it gross. And yea, did Easter laugh for days.

So we must always remember the valiant sacrifice that Easter made to get Jesus through his painful diarrhea.